Wham Bam, Thank You TAM?
NDTV’s lawsuit. Terrible TRPs. Corruption. Bribery. Bankruptcy. And the ordinary Indian and his television habits.
TAM ratings have suddenly been in the news – for all the wrong reasons. Last week, it was reported that NDTV has filed a lawsuit against The Nielsen Company for manipulating TV ratings and viewership data in favour of TV channels willing to pay bribes to its officials. And now that NDTV has opened up a Pandora’s Box, Prasar Bharati is all set to sue TAM as well.
First the basics. TAM stands for Television Audience Measurement. And according to the TAM India website – we’ve taken the liberty of paraphrasing just slightly, so it’s less jargon and more sense – TAM ratings have become the backbone and one of the most “vital variables for any media plan”. And since media planning (or how advertisers decide which platform to place their ads in – whether it be TV, radio or billboards) is all about “being able to communicate efficiently and effectively with your potential consumers, TAM helps advertisers to decide content, timing, and placement of the ads based on TAM ratings which can help them reach their potential Target Group”.
So, the thing is, what programme is more or less popular than others is decided based on TAM ratings. These ratings are based on data collected through viewers’ homes through peoplemeters – which register what programmes a household watches, how often and for what length of time. TRPs are then calculated from this data.
However, the sample size is believed to be too small to be able to be representative of the entire TV viewing population in India. Also, what has suddenly come to the forefront is that the confidentiality of the people who have the meters in their homes is under question, because it seems that these people can be easily identified and persuaded to watch certain channels at certain times – to give a false and skewed indication of popularity.
In fact, there’s more dirt on that later. Who knew the world of TAM was so exciting. It seems to have it all – corruption, bribery, deception, delusion. Okay, the last part we just added for a touch of alliteration.
So, TAM India is a 50:50 joint venture between Kantar Media (the market research arm of London-based advertising and public relations firm WPP Plc) and Nielsen.
NDTV – which is one of their clients – has claimed that it has repeatedly experienced revenue losses due to “rampant corruption” in television viewership data published by TAM. That too for eight years between 2004 to January 2012. Yes yes, we know. NDTV seems to either be very patient, very gullible or very slow off the bat, if it took them eight years to take action. But on a statement on their site, they claim that they’ve received “several assurances from the company that it will stop publishing corrupt TAM data and fix the blatant corruption present in the data”.
NDTV has also said that it had presented several complaints like corrupt data and low sample size to Nielsen officials, along with evidence supporting the data corruption in January this year, after which senior officials of Nielsen and Kantar promised to look into the matter. But no such luck, since Nielsen has continued publishing the corrupted data.
And because Nielsen and Kantar have a monopoly, NDTV has no choice but to depend on TAM data.
Not satisfied with getting the short end of the stick, NDTV has now sued Nielsen, Kantar and TAM in the United States under New York State laws. NDTV has claimed that its share price declined significantly from Rs 501 on January 4, 2008, to Rs 25.7, as of December 20, 2011 because of “loss of shareholder’s respect and faith and it has forced the company to pay higher compensation to retain their demoralised employees”. And to support its claim of “rampant manipulation” of viewership data, NDTV has also mentioned a cloak-and-dagger operation which would have made Cobrapost proud. Really! This is the sting they should have done. Well, at least NDTV’s “demoralised employees” have displayed their acting chops in pursuit of the truth.
According to the suit, “On April 3, 2012, a meeting was held between the representatives of NDTV, namely, Rahul Sood, Sidharth Barhate and Anand Mohan Jha, and two field staff employees of TAM (one provided his first name, while the other did not disclose his name) at Ramada Plaza Hotel, Juhu, Mumbai. The TAM employees revealed that they were employed in Mumbai to look after, and collect data from, TAM meters.
They stated they were willing to manipulate TAM ratings in Mumbai. They showed their identity cards and represented themselves as TAM employees. They also showed TAM manuals to the representatives of NDTV and explained how the meters operate, and the number of meters /areas that they looked after. They were also aware of NDTV’s ratings. They had been in touch with NDTV representatives as mentioned above, therefore, during the meeting they insisted upon NDTV’s permission to activate the system at the earliest so that NDTV could see prompt results of high TRPs as promised by these persons. They claimed to have effected manipulations in the past for other channels and were willing to provide the same “services” for “any” channel that was ready to pay the demanded consideration (bribe). They were confident that they could triple channel ratings of NDTV in Mumbai over a period of two to three weeks in the required target group. They stated they had direct access to homes and visited those homes periodically (at least 3 to 4 times a week) and were in a position to easily influence what the households watched/viewed. They said by paying a bribe of $250 to $500 per household per month, the TAM households could be made to watch only those channels which they insisted upon…”
So now, while NDTV’s triumphant trio of actors have an alternative career option to fall back on – just in case the lawsuit doesn’t go as planned – NDTV and Nielsen will battle it out in the courts.
NDTV’s asked for $580 million for negligence and a minimum of $810 million for fraud, $125 million for negligence and gross negligence against Nielsen, $125 million for negligence and gross negligence against Kantar, $790 million for breach of contract against TAM, $250 million for prima facie tort against TAM and millions more on various costs including legal fees and punitive damages to be determined by trier of fact during the legal proceedings.
Hopefully this should help the flagging finances of the channel which has seen a massive dent to its profitability due to low advertising revenues. Of course, one can’t discount that maybe people just prefer to watch entertainment channels and other news channels instead of NDTV.
Despite accusations being hurled and lawsuits being filed, Nielsen seems to have decided to plead the Fifth. They’ve kept mum ever since the lawsuit has been filed. And taking a leaf out of NDTV’s lawsuit, Prasar Bharati’s CEO Jawahar Sircar has said that he is also keen on taking legal action against TAM on the suppression of data by TAM in regard to viewership of Doordarshan.
Who said the world of media research and planning was boring? Far from it. As a wise man said, “kahani abhi baaki hai mere dost…” In the meantime, be kind. Switch to Prasar Bharati and NDTV whenever you can and don’t pay attention to those wretched TRPs which are constantly being touted by all and sundry.
With inputs from Aastha Manocha
